Tropfen auf heiße Steine

Francois Ozon's film version of Fassbinder's play is like another more slightly surreal, very blackly comic version of "The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant", played out this time mostly by men. Fifty year old Leo picks up twenty year old Franz and brings him home for the night. Franz stays, becoming his lover, his houseboy but mostly his slave. There are only two other characters in this slight, stage-bound piece; Anna, Franz's vacuous former girlfriend and Vera, Leo's former transsexual lover.

Fundamentally it's about love, of the destructive, unwholesome kind maybe, but love nevertheless. Whatever hold Leo has over Franz, (and Vera), they both love him though it could hardly be said that it is reciprocated. Leo is very much the master and everyone else is his slave. Whether he is capable of love is debatable.

Ozon makes the piece both erotic and humorous but it is never quite as touching as it ought to be. All four players give good performances with Malik Zidi quietly outstanding as the boy.

This film truly is a work of art. And like all art, it's formalized; it doesn't even try to hide its formalism. The shots are squared and rigid, the duologue goes in circles, and there's a certain paralellism to the entire picture. It's not meant to be realistic, but like in all great art, it's by codifying and simplifying that deeper truths are revealed.

Despite its minimalism, I was caught up in this film because the duologue is entrancing, the atmosphere is palpable, and the characters act in such mysterious (yet somehow consistent) ways that even though there are certain patterns to the behaviour, you never really know what's coming next. I suppose this film is a comedy, although you won't find yourself laughing much. It's more a case of being too absurd to be considered a serious, straightforward drama.

"Gouttes d'Eau" is not perfect (whit is?), but it has a certain "je ne sais quoi" lending it a uniqueness that places it in my Top 20. Definitely entrancing and thoroughly thought-provoking.

The film version of Fassbinder's play retains the theatrical structure with 4 acts, 4 actors and 4 great performances. The dialogue wins you over at once and keeps you in rapt attention hanging on every word. Leopold a persuasive self-indulgent bi-sexual restructures the lives of 3 people as he introduces them to new sexual adventures. First there's Franz a good-looking 20 year old who is contemplating marriage with his girlfriend Anna. He becomes confused about love when he has a homosexual dream which Leopold is only too happy to recreate once he has enticed the somewhat inexperienced Franz into his bed. Then there's Anna who is agreeably surprised at the change in Franz's sexual attitude. She too is overwhelmed by Leopold's advances towards her. Thirdly there's Vera - now a woman, once a man - Leopold's ex-lover perhaps more confused and disappointed than any of them. It's an entertaining romp as we watch the hand of experience "create" new lives for each of them. Leopold always in search of novelty knows what each victim is yearning for and he is only too ready to meet their desires....at least until the novelty wears off. I felt the first three acts were absolutely flawless. Act 4 with its black humour was less appealing I thought. The telephone call to his mother was quite unforgettable....."I think I'll go to Heaven because I'm young!"....and spoken with such dead pan sincerity. And the follow-up call to mother was a real gem. Yes...it's the dialogue that fascinates and holds the play together... the casting too is exceptional....and as for the old game of Ludo.... it will be so much more meaningful to me in the future!

When Ozon meets Fassbinder, WATER DROPS ON BURNING ROCKS is based on Fassbinder's four- act play he wrote when he was only 19, with a minimal cast of four exclusively boxed inside an apartment, which immediately evokes Fassbinder's own chamber rhapsody THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT (1972), but under Ozon's fabrication, there is enough French glibness and levity to temper an inchoate observer's jejune but palatable fantasy about the abjection of love.

Léopold (Giraudeau), a 50-something business man, brings home a 20-year-old boy Franz (a ginger Zidi), aka. Fassbinder's alter ago, they engage in conversations and consensual sex, and in the next act, six-months later, Franz has already moved in as Léopold's living-in boyfriend. The pair often squabbles about trivial matters due to their different personalities, but a grace not is that their sex can still expunge the discomfort, but inexorably the situation evolves into a humiliation test for Franz, as much as he loves Léopold, how long can he endure his domineering volatility?

During Léopold's away for a business trip, Franz's ex-girlfriend Anna (Sagnier) visits him in the apartment and they rekindle their romance and it seems Franz has finally made up his mind, to end his masochistic affection to Léopold and seek a new lease on life with Anna. But their plan is scuppered when Leopold unexpectedly returns home earlier than planned, he effortlessly dismisses their child's play meanwhile at the drop of a hat, Anna falls under Léopold's suave charm and is more than ready to put out, and the situation compounds when Léopold's jilted old-flame Vera (Levine) pays an unbidden visit, the quartet is assembled, and a new round of master-and- slave game starts. A disconsolate Frantz, piqued by Léopold's promiscuity and haughtiness, and the fact that he has never been taken seriously by him in their lopsided relationship, yet admits his incapability to overcome the inherent subservience which a creature holds towards his creator, conducts a final manifestation of his severance from him once and for all.

Demarcated its running time within a 90-minute spell, the film doesn't feel over-claustrophobic in spite of its one-location-only monotony thanks to Ozon's jaunty tenor and clinical interior design, a telling discrepancy from Fassbinder's own temperament, yet both share an artistic astuteness of exquisite camera compositions to amply and examine the emotional turmoil of their actors.

Although the whole narrative might partake of a youngster's perverse Freudian intuition about love, carnality and preordained conflict between rebellion and submission, the core cast leavens the material with layers of personal touch, ranging from bravado (Sagnier's spritely volupté and Zidi's painstakingly bland greenness) to bravura (Giraudeau's quasi-insufferable cockiness and Levine's uncanny vulnerability under the slap). As a matter of fact, Vera's jeremiad told through her ultimate tête-à-tête with Frantz is more unsettling than Frantz's struggle and the last shot framing at her attempt to fight back the stifled morbidness is Ozon's coup de maitre, who never flinch from exacting gallows humor when someone is shuffled off this mortal coil.

By and large this Ozon-and-Fassbinder hybridization doesn't yield a 1+1>2 ground-breaker, nevertheless it still tackles its intricate dilemma with a measured stride, if not entirely coherent, at least we have that "man in overcoat" fetish to relish with a knowing grin.

This is absolutely vintage Francois Ozon fare. He really does take French farce to a whole new level of humiliation and pain for its victims. I can't help feeling though, that the audience is being asked to laugh at rather than sympathise with their dilemmas. (Just see the scene where the young boy dresses for his hot date in some kind of lederhosen. Don't tell me you weren't giggling). Underneath the kitsch seventies style and the black humour, however, this film has a serious topic: the very nature of desire. These are characters who will do anything in order to fulfill their desires, regardless of the destruction they cause to themselves, or in the case of Leopold, others. But what else is their for them in the suburbs of a non descript German town? capitalism may let you have sex without whoever you want, but it doesn't seem to give you the tools to know whether you really want to be having sex with that person in the first place. An intelligent, witty and thought provoking film.